


tender mercy

by misandrywitch



Series: that's not music you hear that's the devil [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Folk band AU, POV Michael Guerin, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: Everyone in the room watches Alex put his fingers to strings, the power of collective experiences that can’t be replicated still shared with everyone present and Michael -Michael’s never seen Alex quite like this but he still knows, because he was there first.(It's the Alex/Michael folk band part 2... Alex got the hell out of Roswell in 2008 with his guitar. Michael took his own path. Here's what happened the morning after their reunion.)
Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: that's not music you hear that's the devil [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576177
Comments: 30
Kudos: 124





	tender mercy

**Author's Note:**

> i knew i wanted to write more in this universe & mostly wanted to write the morning-after conversation, so just rewrote my own fic from the other point of view for the thrill of it. sequel to 'everywhere on earth you go,' & won't make much sense if you don't start there. 
> 
> title is from 'absolute lithops effect' by the mountain goats -> 
> 
> "This is a song about sitting alone in a room waiting for something to happen. A subject that's most insufficiently addressed by pop music. You know, because not everybody really is going to find the one they love, but everybody is going to spend some time alone in a room waiting for something to happen."  
\- John Darnielle at Dan's Silverleaf in Texas, in 2014.
> 
> every photo of tyler blackburn wearing a silly hat is also a photo of folk band au alex manes so picture that in your head & then enjoy

_Believe in yourself. You can get out if you’re committed to the effort. There are no windows or doors and the walls are on fire. I love you. I loved you. You can’t make me leave._

\- liner notes from _All Hail West Texas _by The Mountain Goats (2002)

**2018: **

“I’ve got an interesting little thing for you to tinker with. I know how much you like to fix other people’s problems.” 

A phone call like that is never going to start off well, even from Katie at the bar down the street, so Michael sighs heavily into the receiver in lieu of an answer. 

“I’m busy.” 

“And I have a problem that needs fixing.” 

“I’m busy with something important.” 

“What are you doing that’s important? Right now?” Katie oversees the booze part of the sketchy bar-meets-concert-venue that happens to be the closest dive to Michael’s apartment in Albuquerque. He’d gone in there entirely on accident and it had turned into a habit, the way places like that - bad decor, worse well drinks, classic music and the occasional peanut shell - always turn into habits. Michael’s done his fair share of bouncing around since leaving Roswell, and he’s got the art of finding a dive like this down to a science. 

Usually without the questionable music venue wrapped up in it but - whatever, everybody’s got to make some money. Michael can’t begrudge that.

“Uh,” Michael looks at his surroundings for inspiration and sees nothing but a chair of unwashed laundry and his own engine-greased knuckles. “I’m working on my thesis.”

“You’re always working on your thesis. Unless your thesis has a first name, then that’s not a priority.” 

Michael sighs and tugs his hands through his hair, assessing his options. “You want me to leave my house on a Friday night, come by the bar ten minutes before some concert’s supposed to start to fix some musician’s busted-up van for funsies.” 

“That sums it up, yeah,” Katie says into the phone. 

“Pretty weak offer.” 

“Pleasure of my company,” Katie says, her voice sliding into suggestion. “And I’ll buy your drinks for a week.” 

Of all the bartenders that Michael’s developed a comfortably flirtatious rapport with in his life - and there’ve been many - Katie Garcia is the slyest. Michael would definitely be interested in sleeping with her, if Isobel hadn’t gotten there first in the free-wheeling few months after her divorce had been finalized. There are some things a man doesn’t need to share with his sister.

“Now we’re talkin’,” Michael says, giving in. He was probably always going to say yes. Not like he’s doing anything of substance tonight anyway. “I’ll be there in ten. Who’s van am I fixing? Anyone I’d recognize?” 

“Some folk musician,” Katie says. “A guitar-drum deal, but maybe just guitar because the drummer won’t come out of the bathroom.” 

“Huh?”

“Long story. Weird night. He’s nice though. I Googled him earlier and his music’s not really my thing but it he’s cute. Name’s Alex Manes?” 

And a bomb goes off inside Michael’s brain. 

That’s what it feels like, anyway. A huge, reckless nuclear explosion that grinds all other working processes to a halt, vaporizing higher life in white heat and leaving nothing but silence and smoking wreckage. A little bit like falling through Earth’s atmosphere in a decomposing spaceship might feel like - and Michael ought to know, having survived it once. 

“Say that again,” he barks, his hand suddenly white-knuckled around his cell phone. Light fixtures rattle. 

“Alex Manes,” Katie says. She sounds confused, with no way to understand Michael’s improbable reaction to those three syllables. “Why?” 

Michael forces himself to focus, to breathe, to control. Things he’s learned he’s got to do over long years because not doing so is dangerous. The glass bulb in the lamp next to his bed stops rattling. 

“Turns out,” he says, “that is someone I recognize after all.” 

When he sets the phone down his hand aches from how tight he’d been clutching it. A nice little reminder, ever present. The scars on his left knuckles are old and white. 

It could be a coincidence, someone else’s name. Michael says this to himself as he puts his hat on, gets his keys and starts the engine of his truck. Just a combination of three syllables that happen to form themselves into the name of the first person Michael Guerin ever really loved who he didn’t also literally fall out of the sky with. 

It could be. 

It isn’t. 

The bar is crammed, and Katie grabs him by an elbow and maneuvers him through the crowd with remarkable force considering she’s five feet tall. They end up in a back hallway that leads up to the stage, and a cluster of people are all talking with intensity at the shoulders of a man in a dark jacket holding a guitar. 

That, also, could be a coincidence - there are lots of men who play guitars in the world - and the set of someone’s shoulders means nothing, not after ten years. Ten years ago, Michael could have picked them out of a lineup. But it’s ten years later. 

Even so, the flood of nerves and confusion is almost physical. He can feel it overtake the part of his brain steeped in rationality, which isn’t all that present on a good day. He studies those shoulders through the crowd, trying to find a detail to confirm it, or one to prove him wrong. A dark, tousled head of hair, the flash of silver in an ear, the upturned collar of a leather jacket and the canvas strap of the guitar. 

The chaos in the hallway seems to reach a breaking point because the man with the guitar throws up one hand so the strings twang in discord. “Fuck the drummer!” he yells, the words as clear through the din as the voice is in Michael’s memory. "Fuck his van, and fuck your fucking mechanic friend while I'm at it!"

He’d know that particular cadence - the edge of irritation almost into real anger caught up in the joy of just saying a word that shouldn’t be said in polite company - just about anywhere. Michael panics. 

And as usual, that means he opens his mouth and something idiotic falls out. 

“I mean, you’re suggesting it,” he hears himself say, a laconic drawl that’s all fronts and deflection, “not me.” 

The man whirls in the hallway, almost taking someone out with the side of the guitar. It happens in an instant and it’s slow - so slow - enough for dread to creep in. Michael thinks, wildly, he’d do anything to recognize the face turning towards him in fury. Just like he’d do anything else for it to be a stranger. 

It isn’t. 

“Guerin,” Alex Manes’s mouth forms his name like it always did, like it fits there. He’s staring at him like he’s seen a ghost. Maybe he has. 

“Ah, there it is. He does remember,” Michael says, and can’t help how his voice sounds bitter and hopefully and unsteady all at once. 

Alex doesn’t blink, doesn’t turn until he’s practically pulled away towards the stage door. 

“Don’t move,” he says, eyebrows drawing together. Then Alex turns in a rush and sprints down the hallway. 

Michael stares into the empty space he left in his wake for a long moment, his mouth still open with something unsaid left hanging. If he were to close his eyes he could almost imagine this was a fragment of a dream, a spun sugar hypothetical that will burst the minute he gives it real consideration. There are a few of those in Michael’s life. He’d be lying if he never considered what it might feel like, to run into Alex again somewhere. Out of all the improbable things he’s worn out with wondering, that one at least doesn’t count as science fiction. 

But now he’s here. And Alex had told him not to move. It’s a request, or a command, or maybe a question. It doesn’t matter. Michael’s going to do what he asks. He forces himself into motion, heads towards the bar at the back of the room because that’s a consistency. 

It’s not until the lights in the room start to dim that Michael realizes exactly what Alex sprinting into the backstage wings means for him, in his waiting. It’s idiocy - because it’s also the reason Alex is here at all. 

It’s a concert. And Alex is going to sing. 

He comes out onstage to applause, overhead lighting throwing catching his dark hair and his smile. Alex had been tense and angry in the hallway but he’s at ease up here, even moments later. He leans into the mic. 

“My name’s Alex Manes,” he says, an affirmation of everything that’s happened in Michael’s life in the last half an hour. It’s the real confirmation, hearing Alex say so himself across a room and through a speaker system. He should be distant and impossible, someone Michael used to know who made it big, magnetic onstage and gone in a flash. 

“I’m going to sing you a few songs. How’s that sound?” Alex’s face is beautiful caught in blue stage lights, like it belongs there. There’s a natural cast to his shoulders; he’s done this before, a hundred times or a thousand. 

He’s not distant, not impossible. Michael can almost imagine he’s looking at him through the crowd. It’s as clear and as close as Alex ever was back then and the moment before Alex puts his hands on the strings of his guitar feels just the same. He’d always been shy about it, and Michael had to tease it out of him, flirt and cajole and sometimes just ask. 

That moment is still there, the tiniest pause before the music starts. Michael sees it because he looks for it. Alex closes his eyes and his brows touch between them. A moment of silence. 

He’s done this a hundred times, or a thousand. Everyone in the room watches Alex put his fingers to strings, the power of collective experiences that can’t be replicated still shared with everyone present and Michael - 

Michael’s never seen Alex quite like this but he still knows, because he was there first.

**2008:**

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The words catch Michael off-guard, half-hidden with his head peering over the engine of his truck, and he turns around so fast he narrowly avoids smacking his temple against the hood. He turns with such vigor because he knows who he’ll see when he gets all the way around. 

Alex always says _ fuck _with a little mean-spirited spitting emphasis, like he’s waiting for someone to dare comment on it. Michael’s head over heels for how he does that. It’s currently first on the list of things he’s head over heels for about Alex Manes, which grows by the hour and sometimes by the minute.

His really bad haircut, and the smear of dark eyeliner underneath each eye, and his chipped nail polish, and how is mouth looks when he says the word _ fuck, _and how his eyes catch midafternoon sun and lighten to a warm brown, and his voice, and how the strap of his guitar case sits across the line of his shoulders.

For instance. 

Michael realizes that he’s staring, and that he hasn’t said anything, and that Alex is watching him with a bemused expression on his face. 

“Looking at the engine,” he says, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the truck. “Thinking about taking it apart and putting it back together again.”

“What’s the appeal of that?” The crease to Alex’s face when someone’s said something he thinks is silly - there’s another one. 

“Might be able to make some improvements.” Michael grabs at the rag sitting over the hood of the truck and tries in vain to wipe at his hands. He’s grimy in a satisfying way from dicking around inside the vehicle all morning, but he’s suddenly aware he’s grimy and Alex has come out to the junkyard to look for him. He doesn’t scrub his knuckles against his jeans, anyway, and that counts for something. 

“You a mechanic now?” 

“Maybe. Sanders says if I can prove I know my way around an engine he might kick me some work as long as I’m still here. Better than hauling boxes around.” Michael is hoping that won’t be for long, but it never hurts to have money to burn. 

Alex nods, bites his lip, and his eyes flicker down to Michael’s scuffed sneakers, and then up to his face again. It’s a vague shock to realize Alex is checking him out.

“Can I tear you away from that?” he says, and smiles. 

Michael shrugs, like he’s going to say anything else but yes. Alex barely has to ask, and Michael would follow him. Follow him to the ends of the earth and forever and back again - that’s also a vague slow-burning realization he’s not quite sure how to contend with. 

“Depends what for. I’m pretty tied up here.” 

Alex’s fingers tighten around the guitar strap on his shoulder. “But I want to go for a drive.” 

“I’m convinced.” Michael slams the hood on the truck down, grins over his shoulder as Alex walks past him to hop up into the passenger seat. An awkward step, slightly too tall. “You gotta shut the door harder,” Michael points. “It sticks.”

Alex rolls his eyes in serious exaggeration, then slams the door shut a second time. “If you put on country music I’m changing my mind.”

“Well, the radio’s stuck on one station. One of those things I wanna improve on. So, we can sit in silence?”

“Fine.” Alex rolls his eyes again and then - Michael catches this - looks around himself through the windshield and back behind them. He’s scoping exits, checking for onlookers like a nervous habit. 

And then, apparently satisfied, he leans across the stick shift and up into Michael’s space. , Michael’s a little slow on the uptake, but not that slow. Alex kisses him soft, almost fleeting. Even so, it’s like rapid-fire static electricity right to the nervous system, wild and amazing and terrifying all at once. 

When Michael opens his eyes, Alex is looking at him. 

“Hey,” he says, almost shyly. His teeth catch on his bottom lip and Michael wants to touch that spot with every other part of his body. 

“Yeah,” Michael says, which is profoundly silly, “hey, nice of you to say hi. I see your ulterior motives.” 

“Shut up,” Alex says. He flushes, but doesn’t turn his head. He looks pleased with himself. The circumstances where Alex looks pleased with himself aren’t easy to come by, so Michael feels a vicious stab of success. “Like you don’t.” 

“I might.” 

“Would you just drive the truck?” Alex sits back into the passenger seat, doesn’t buckle his seatbelt. He leans back to prop one of his black fuck-you boots on the dashboard, laces trailing. 

“Where do you wanna go?” 

“Anywhere,” Alex says, trusting. He doesn’t trust easy. He’s not braced for defense - the second thing Michael had noticed about him. The first was the graceful pattern of his fingers on guitar strings. And the scowl. So Michael drives. 

One week and a day ago, Michael had kissed him in the back room of the UFO Emporium. 

He hasn’t stopped thinking about it for a minute and as he gains evidence - more kisses, considerably slower without the risk of getting caught given in the alley behind the museum, and near-stolen ones against the side of his truck on three early mornings, and this one - he’s sure that’s the rule, not the exception. 

It’s like a door’s been slammed open somewhere inside his head, a look into a room Michael never thought he’d get a foot into. It looks like Alex in a t-shirt and jeans with holes at the knees, humming some tune Michael doesn’t recognize in the passenger seat of his truck. 

The town fades behind them, sleepy and useless and almost a little pretty in the afternoon sun. Michael doesn’t hate it. He turns down a random county road, jostling teeth in skulls as he gets about a half a mile before giving up. Hills loom in the distance to the west. Somewhere in there, he can’t tell the exact direction, is an abandoned mine with his great life secret hidden in it. He thinks, fast and guilty, what it would like to show Alex that secret. Blow the lid off the whole thing just to do it. 

He’s never had that thought before. Not even close to it. 

Alex pushes the truck’s door open and pulls his guitar with him, so Michael follows him out. They hop up into the truck bed, not caring that knees knock together or that Alex’s hip is right up against Michael’s. Nobody else around, the two of them could be alone on the surface of the moon. Michael might prefer it that way. 

“You bring your guitar? We could play or something.” 

“It’s in the truck,” Michael points through the back window. He doesn’t have anywhere else to keep it, but he keeps that to himself. He doesn’t quite have the nerve to leave belongings in the tool shed in the back acre of the Manes family land. 

“Or I could - “ Alex unzips his own guitar from the case carefully. It’s nicer than the one he gave it away; once it had been his mother's, Michael remembers, and there’s a story there he doesn’t quite have the nerve to ask. “I mean, I wrote something.” 

“Then I wanna hear it.” Michael props his arms against the side of the truck to lean back and watch. 

“Don’t think it’s any good,” Alex says, perfunctory, but he’s already frowning down at his hands. 

“C’mon,” Michael says, and he touches Alex’s knee, and then the seam of his jeans along the inside of his knee. 

Alex’s eyes flick up to his, then down again. He takes a breath and he’s frozen, amber-still in the sun with his fine, mean eyebrows cutting a line down his forehead. He hits the first chord. And then he breathes out. 

His voice is nervous until it steadies, then clear and catching. The chords are a little discordant, then they resolve. Michael can’t take his eyes off of him. If he had the choice, he never would. A stupid thing to be so sure of at seventeen but - he’s sure. 

Alex ends the song and doesn’t look at him, eyes sliding sideways instead. He gets like that, suddenly bitter and then suddenly tense and then suddenly almost fragile enough to see through. 

“Alex,” Michael says, and he doesn’t try to hide how his voice sounds like it could be broken open, “that was amazing. You’re amazing.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not. I want to hear another one.” 

Something in Alex’s eyes turns darker, mischievous. “Maybe later,” he says, and he carefully sets the guitar aside. 

Static electricity anticipation. Michael’s clumsy and ill-fitting in his body as Alex slides towards him in the bed of the truck, but it doesn’t matter. His hands touch Alex’s elbows, and then his waist, and both Alex’s arms link behind Michael’s neck with his knees on either side of Michael’s knees. Michael can feel the clear heat of him, something so unmistakable, and when Alex kisses him Michael lets everything else fall away. 

Alex’s body above him, Michael has no idea what he’s doing. That doesn’t matter either. 

“Do you want - “ he says, not even sure what he’s asking for except that he wants more, wants to be closer and wants to know that Alex wants it. 

“Yeah,” Alex says against his jaw. “Yes, please Guerin, please - “ 

Looking back on himself in that moment, grinning and flushed in the open air, he feels the rise of regret for naivete. Acting without consequence, without worry - because he wanted to and so had Alex. Looking back, it’s tangled up into shades of loss and bitterness and anger; adult emotions, adult nuance. 

At the time, he’d been nothing beyond simply, uncomplicatedly, happy.

**2010:**

“You’re ditching me to throw detached car doors around in a junkyard in Santa Fe,” Isobel says this into the phone like it’s a personal affront to her happiness. For her, right now, it probably is. 

Michael, barely-functioning cell phone pressed between his ear and shoulder, sighs. Standing on an intersection in a city he doesn’t live in, he’d been looking for a stop to grab a bite for under six bucks before returning to the work he’d promised to get to that afternoon. Apparently there’s sometimes a cheap-but-good tamale stand nearby, but he doesn’t see it. He’d been contemplating his options when Isobel called, precise and irritated and affectionate all rolled into one. 

Technically, he’s working - or one definition of it, the kind Max and Isobel both seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around. He’d driven to Santa Fe early that morning as a favor so Sanders, the aging font of weird war stories and weirder UFO tall tales who owns the junkyard outside town, wouldn’t have to. He’d spent most of his morning arguing with several distrustful men about the price of sheet metal and lug nuts, hefting grimy crates around in the hot sun. Now he’s sweaty, dusty, starving - and on the phone with Isobel, who is sympathetic to none of those things. 

“I’ll be back when I’m back, Iz,” he says into the phone, watching his own feet in his seriously scuffed work boots on the sidewalk. He’ll have to replace them soon. He might have to ask Isobel, twenty and collegiate and never short on money to spend on nothing, for help there. He’d rather be dead than ask Max. 

“I just don’t understand why you had to pick today of all days to be out of town. You’re never out of town. You had to do some old guy a favor?”

“I mean, the old guy is paying me so - “ Michael likes old Sanders, always has. They both seem to hate almost everyone else in Roswell equally, and the old man never gave a shit about Michael’s truck occupying his land but nor did he ever attempt to offer sympathy.

That’s not the kind of world Isobel operates in though, of course. Not what she worries about. Her grades and her looks and fitting in right, keeping secrets - hers and theirs - neatly hidden and keeping her own edges disguised. 

Michael knows she worries about him in her own way, doesn’t understand why he’s lingering around Roswell so long after the legal threads tying him there have been cut. 

“Max is making me crazy,” Isobel says and yeah, no, Michael doesn’t really want to have this conversation right now. He surveys the street - gallery, record store, cafe with seven dollar lattes. 

In a fit of irritation, Michael swings the door to the record store open. 

He’s wildly out of place here, unshowered in a beat up jean jacket that Max hadn’t wanted. The guy behind the counter is wearing enormous glasses and a turtleneck. He gives Michael a look and Michael smiles and waves until he looks away. 

“I just walked into a store,” he snaps into the janky receiver. “Gotta call you back.” 

“Michael!” Isobel’s voice is tinny and irritated. “I’m not going to win this argument on my own, you don’t have to be so - “

“Sorry,” Michael draws, and snaps the phone shut. The guy behind the counter glares at him a second time. “Sisters, man,” Michael says, like they’re commiserating. The guy is probably worried Michael’s going to shoplift something. 

Michael might, frankly, if he wasn’t being watched like a hawk. He’s good at a little sleight of hand when it suits him, particularly if he knows Max might catch him in the act. Nonetheless, he doesn’t like the attitude. 

He knows what he looks like, always has. People do the math and assume the worst. A skinny kid with hand me down jackets living out of his truck and scoring big on standardized tests when he bothers to show up for class is only as interesting as his social worker makes him out to be, but at least the circumstances aren’t his fault. These days, Michael’s to blame for how his life turned out. A kid with nothing but promise shoved at him who doesn’t take it is just a scumbag by another name. 

It bothers him more than he lets on, but he also likes it more than he should. 

So Michael doesn’t leave the record store even though his sister’s off the phone. He lingers, starts flipping through a stack of albums with an indie labels sign hanging haphazardly above them. Not really looking for anything, he flips past names he doesn’t know or care about. It’s the kind of store geared towards experts, enthusiasts, people who want to ask questions about genre and technique and what’s trending. 

Places like this always make Michael think about Alex Manes, who was like that. Michael can listen to anything with a good guitar riff and be happy, but Alex had been full of opinions on what was good, what sucked, what was going to take off and what was too tacky or just tacky enough. He was always wandering through high school hallways with his headphones on like an invisible dividing line between him and everyone else, and always pushing one earbud towards the people he liked so they could hear what he was hearing. He and Rosa Ortecho mostly, heads bent together in the corner of the cafe on late afternoons when Michael and Max would hang around there, doing homework and eating fries. 

The first time Alex had done that to him, held one headphone in his direction with a raised eyebrow, Michael had almost yanked it out of his grip in his fumbling enthusiasm. He hadn’t liked the music very much. But that hadn’t been the point. It was about trust, a tangible extension of connection and Alex had offered it to him.

Two years later, that still means something. He can’t imagine it won’t, no matter how much time goes by.

Maybe it’s because that’s on his mind, the six-month gasp of fresh air that had blown into his life before leaving just as fast and as fierce, but he doesn’t even register it at first. He flips right past the CD before his brain catches up with his eyes. Michael freezes. Stares at his hands. Slowly, suddenly uncertain and offput, he flips the stack forward again. 

He hadn’t made it up, filled in the blanks with memory and wishful thinking. There, printed in black and white against a colorful geometric background under the plastic case, is a name. 

Michael stares at the printed letters, clean black lines and curves, until his vision blurs. And then he blinks, looks up. Filled with a sudden manic inspiration, he whirls around to stare across the room. 

“Hey,” he says, waving his hand in the direction of the guy behind the checkout counter. “Earth to you. You actually working?”

“What is it?” The guy doesn’t roll his eyes but he doesn’t come out from behind the counter, either. 

“Know anything about this one?” Michael holds the CD out in his direction and the guy squints at it for a second. 

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “Indie label based in Seattle. Chill shit, most of the time. Not that though. It’s real gritty, kinda political. I dug it but it was kind of a stretch. Folk punk, right?”

“What the hell is folk punk?” Michael lets himself ask the question, get distracted by the details. 

“Like, The Violet Femmes? Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains? Or the Front Bottoms, even? Or local stuff, you know Arroyo Deathmatch?”

“That’s gibberish,” Michael says. “You’re talking words at me and they mean nothing.” 

“You gonna buy that or what?” 

“Yeah, I am actually. Thank you.” 

Michael doesn’t really have ten bucks to blow right now. He slaps the CD down on the counter anyway, props his elbows up on either side of it so the clerk has to look him in the eye as he rings him up. He knows how he looks, dusty and unshaven and going nowhere. He shoves a wrinkled ten dollar bill on the counter, leaves the change, sweeps the CD into his hands and stomps out the door.

The afternoon is sun-baked and hot and his truck is hotter inside. It’s only when he’s slammed the door shut and locked it firmly that Michael takes a second hard look at what he’s bought. 

ALEX MANES - it says - THROUGH THE FEAR OF IT.

His fingers tremble over the printed letters still under plastic. He wants the facts to disprove this somehow. Thumbnail under plastic wrapping, he looks for a detail that will show him he just blew ten bucks on a CD he’s going to hate because whoever made it happens to have the same name as someone that he - 

Someone that he knew. 

But the evidence doesn’t come. The CD itself is black with the name and title of the album printed in white letters. ALEX MANES it says, again, a reiteration. There’s a CD sleeve, more geometric patterns. One line of text printed on the side he can see - _ For Rosa, _ it says, _ because she was right. _He feels like he’s going to throw up. 

Michael tries to take a deep breath and fails, the pressure of improbability and expectation sitting right against his ribs. So he just holds it, until he feels his pulse against his temple, and slides the CD into the slot on the dashboard. 

Gritty static crackle. An acoustic guitar, arrhythmic but clean even through speakers that sound like they’re made of shoestrings and tin. That tells him nothing, like the name, like the dedication - it could still be the universe’s sick idea of a joke. One thing will make this sure, make it real. 

A voice drops in, singing. Prickly and expansive and clean. 

For the first time in two years, Michael hears Alex’s voice. 

No second-guessing that, no doubt, no uncertainty. He never forgot. A hundred years from now, he’ll still know that sound - his delicate vowells and the dusky rise into higher registers. 

There’s a photo that appears when Michael unfolds the CD sleeve; he finds it like an archaeologist uncovering something buried in sediment. He’s felt like that a lot lately, combing abandoned mines and sandy dunes with a metal detector and sunscreen on the backs of his arms. Looking for clues, for history. 

And here it was, in a way. His history. A black and white photograph, Alex Manes in profile. All in black. His hair is long and untidy, the striking lines of his face more severe than they were two years ago. 

Michael sits in his truck in the sun for the length of the album, barely breathing. Barely moving. He holds his left hand in his right and the pain in his little finger is an aching through-line to something tangible. Someone real and alive and singing songs with a guitar - somewhere. Somewhere not here. That’s a good thing.

It was what Alex always wanted. 

He trips through anger, loneliness, indignation, relief, pride - shame. Frustration. Spite. 

Spite is a deep and undying factor in Michael’s life, one he leans on if not since birth then at least since he was deposited unwillingly on the surface of this ridiculous planet. He’s been doing next to nothing, almost two years of it, out of a bone-deep worry but also out of spite. 

The album ends with a crackle of static. Michael stares at the CD as it spins to a stop in the player, and then out the window at the Santa Fe street. He wipes sweat from his forehead with his wrist. 

He put the truck into drive, and hits play on the album a second time, and pulls out of the parking lot into the street, and suddenly thinks very hard and very clearly about what he might do next.

**2018:**

The New Mexico night sky is a vault of secrets, the kind Michael wants to figure out how to read. Other nights he might be looking skyward but tonight Alex Manes is sitting in the bed of his truck. 

That’s been one of the only things, over the years, worth stopping and holding still for. Alex’s hand sits on his shoulder like an anchor.

“I think,” Alex says, his eyes wide and dark and serious, “I’ve been waiting to see your face in some bar somewhere for a long time.” 

The night sky is caught in them, Alex’s eyes. At least Michael can imagine it is. The force of his words seems to have caught him off guard because he’s frozen, still and silent and staring. The space between them is so fragile Michael could break it apart with a breath and he’s suddenly certain that one wrong move will cause Alex to run. 

He has the feeling that might be a reflex, the way throwing a punch first always seems to be his. He doesn’t usually mean to. Alex’s face is frozen, waiting for that response. Michael has to get this right. 

That first time - Alex’s first album - it had taken him three times to actually listen to the lyrics, so caught up in hearing Alex’s voice at all. When he had he’d been knocked sideways a second time by the time he was really listening to the third song on the CD. Smart and pithy, a little confusing, the allusion might go over someone’s head - but Michael had been there, when what Alex is singing about had happened. He was pretty sure. It felt like a leap, an assumption, a huge demand of his own ego but - he was pretty damn sure. 

He’d searched for his name on the free library computers in the public library, unsure of what he’d find. No fixed address, no clarity. Alex-the-band had a Facebook page, a website. A litany of concert videos on Youtube uploaded by strangers in dive bars on shaky cameras. Hearing Alex was bad - seeing him in motion onstage was worse. Michael couldn’t make himself watch. 

It’s someone’s comment underneath the video that gives him pause. 

“Yeah, saw this guy’s show in Seattle and he got incredibly stoned and went on and on about how this song is about the inherent homoeroticism and racism built into the myth of the American West but I’m also pretty sure it’s about oral sex. Great song. See him live!”

Sitting in the public library around noon on a weekday, Michael threw his head back and laughed and laughed until the librarian had to tell him to shut up or leave. 

Things change - of course they do, that’s what they’re supposed to do - but the almost-hysterical feeling of warmth and panic and want and fondness Michael feels now is the same as what Michael felt then. What Michael felt at seventeen. 

So it’s not hard, to know what to do next. 

He kisses Alex. He does it with the same hopefully trepidation he’d felt the first time he’d kissed him - now a decade gone. 

Michael kisses him. Michael holds his face in his hands. Michael breathes the same air that Alex is breathing. 

Alex kisses him back, his mouth hot. Michael feels the intention in his jaw, the same sudden need for movement. He pulls at Alex’s hair. Eases his mouth open with the slide of his tongue. 

“Can I ask you,” Alex says, his voice catching, “to drive me back into town now?” 

This isn’t what Michael intended, even as he pulls Alex to his feet, opens his car door, starts the engine. He’s thought about it tonight, looking at Alex on that stage and at Alex pulling hard at the passenger door of his car like he always used to do, and at Alex sitting in the night air with his head tipped back - singing along. He’s be insane not to have thought about it. He has no idea how not to look at Alex Manes without wanting him. It’s a pointless distinction. 

But it’s different when it’s real, and Alex is looking at him somewhere between a promise and a challenge

Michael’s nervous - in a good way, and a bad one. He’s filled with it, the anticipation, and so is the space between them in the truck. Alex’s breathing is unsteady. Michael can see that in the movement of his throat. He looks out the window as Michael drives, pushing the speed limit and not feeling bad about that at all. 

Michael presses Alex up against his own front door, the arm of his couch, his mattress. Kisses him and kisses him again and again. Alex puts his fingers in his mouth and Michael wants to be closer than that even though that’s not possible. 

Things don’t usually live up to his memory of them - but Alex’s body underneath him does. So does their fight afterwards, nasty and bitter and honest.

He falls asleep with Alex’s elbow pressing into his side, and doesn’t mind it. 

Michael wakes up somewhere in the arena of two in the morning, confirmed more by the grey blanket of darkness than by his bedroom clock. He sleeps in erratics, anytime anywhere and when it suits him. Two in the morning is an old friend. 

The shape in the bed next to him, breathing steadily, is not. 

The light filtering in through roadside streetlights outside the building is yellow-grey and dim, just enough that Michael can pick out features and the suggestion of more. Alex sleeps with his mouth open, his left hand tucked under his chin like he’s protecting it. His face is lines and shadows, dark brows, eyelashes, the divot above his upper lip and right below his chin. 

Michael never stopped thinking about him, not really. For the first time in ten years, he doesn’t have to wonder about where he is. 

Alex is frowning in his sleep, or the shadows are falling on his face that way. Michael can’t help it. He reaches out to put his pointer finger to the crease between his eyebrows, the edge of the old scar there. Michael doesn’t know how he got it. He pushes the wrinkle away, a whisper-light touch along one eyebrow. Something Isobel does, when she can tell something is bothering him. Push the worry away. 

He’s so intent on that movement that it takes Michael a moment to notice that Alex’s eyes have moved, that he’s looking at him. In the night light, his eyes are deep and dark and almost black. 

“Michael,” he says, not even a whisper really - just the motion of the word. 

“Go back to sleep.” Michael feels like he’s been caught somehow, but Alex doesn’t close his eyes. He can see their gleam in the shadows, the light caught in them. Half asleep, he doesn’t move. Michael touches the corner of his eye, his cheekbone. The crease of his mouth. Alex’s tongue is hot and wet and slow. 

Michael kisses him soft. Over and over, eases his mouth open little by little. Thumb against his Adam’s apple, he can feel when Alex’s breath catches and the long exhale. Sleepy and still, the edges of his attitude and his hard-won defenses gone, Alex lets him tip his head back to feel his pulse under his tongue. 

He winds his fingers into the hair at the crown Alex’s forehead, scraping nails along his scalp so he gasps. The stutter of breath is what Michael wants, a chain reaction, like physics. Like a chord progression. Do one thing and get a response. Living proof. He needs the evidence. 

“Can I - “ 

“Please - “ Alex’s response moves through his larynx so Michael can feel that vibration under his own jaw. He wants to have Alex repeat the alphabet to feel that. Sing Bob Dylan. Read his own lyrics, or the phone book. Doesn’t matter. 

This could bleed into urgency, the high thrum of desire beating in time with his own pulse against his temples and wrists. But Michael holds into the rhythm, almost too slow but building into something like an old four-four time folk song rises into a chorus. Alex pushes his fingers into Michael’s hair and the sound Michael makes - he hears it - is the loudest thing in the room. 

Alex rolls his hips, an invitation, and Michael moves hand over hand until he’s between his legs. He moves his jaw along a hipbone, imagining the burn of stubble, and presses his finger into the muscle above Alex’s knee to drop it open. Eyes closed, he takes in the smell of his sweat, his skin. 

This will only last as long as Alex lets it last. 

All Michael can do is push it as long as he can.

**2016:**

Max brought Michael a beer to where he’s lounging on Isobel’s couch and, rather than wandering off to make them all dinner or whatever, he sits down and puts both his big hands on his knees like he’s about to pontificate. That doesn’t bode well. It never does. 

“Isobel dodged my answer to how long you plan on staying here,” Max says, probably aiming for casual. He mostly looks constipated. “Do you have a plan?” 

Michael is tired and dusty and not really in the mood for whatever this is, a lecture or something else. Everything Max has to say usually turns into a lecture of some kind. Michael spent six hours that morning rattling around the junkyard outside Roswell in the wind, helping the elderly Mr. Sanders replace spark plugs for a lack of anything else useful to do with himself. He’d gotten paid alright for it, but he’s beat. He wants a beer, a shower, a nap. 

Two months ago, Max had insinuated that Michael ought to make himself useful if he planned to keep loitering on Isobel’s couch, so Michael had badgered Sanders, an old familiar face from his teenage years, into tossing some work his way. Now he’s mad Michael’s accomplishing something menial. 

“She’s not in a hurry to kick me out,” Michael shrugs. “And it’s her place. Why? You gonna move in here too?” 

“No,” Max says, shaking his head. “Can I just be worried? It was nice of you, to come out here after - it’s just been six months. “

Filing divorce paperwork and throwing Noah’s belongings into duffel bags, Isobel hadn’t wanted to be in her house alone. Max had been there, of course, but Max’s affection always came across as worry and concern. Michael’s pretty sure what Isobel had wanted was someone to cut a little loose with. 

So, he’d quit his boring job in Denver, paid the month’s rent on the little plot he’d been parking his trailer at in cash, and driven back to Roswell for his first extended stay in years. 

“Iz asked me to come stay with her,” Michael points out stubbornly. “It’s what she wants.” 

“I mean,” Max frowns at his beer bottle, “I just can’t tell if this is what Iz wants, or what you want.” 

“What?” Michael snaps, his typical low-grade exasperation at Max’s high-minding boiling over into real irritation. “Keeping her company? Or is it sitting around doing nothing that you’ve got a problem with. Hand me a badge, chief, I’ll go shoot some bad guys in my spare time.” 

“I have no idea, Michael,” Max says, ignoring the dig. “I have no idea what you want. I can’t tell if you do, either.” 

Michael stares at him, perplexed. 

Once, his brother had wanted real, big things. Aspirational ones. He’d wanted to write something meaningful. Always great for a joke, sure, but there was an optimistic dignity in that nevertheless. Michael wonders if that’s still true, buried in there somewhere. Max wants to protect them and keep their secret and retain control of the wheel by slamming the brakes to a halt. And Isobel - Isobel wants normalcy, and she wants to be the talk of the town because of her hemline and her successes and her gossip-column drama, and she wants the three of them to look each other in the eye head on and get along. 

Max wants stability, and Isobel wants to blend in. Michael doesn’t want either of those things. 

What does he want? 

“I’d like a refill,” he says, finally, waggling his beer can. “Other than that, I think I’m hunky dory.” 

He is, more or less. Doing okay. He’s just bored out of his mind, and angry enough to spit at the heavens knowing they might spit back - which is easier to forget when he’s not bored. Lounging around on Isobel’s couch and fixing cars and stirring up trouble at Roswell’s local dive bar suits him.

And it pisses Max off, which suits him even more. 

He can tell this because Max sighs, tipping his head back. “I thought you liked your job, is all.” His handsome face goes all sideways when he’s trying to puzzle out Michael’s decision-making. “You seemed pretty happy and you ditched it to come back here and - “

“I was bored,” Michael is getting tired of this conversation. “And Iz needed me. Man, five years ago you were pissed at me for leaving Roswell and now you’re pissed at me for coming back here? At least keep it consistent.” 

Max sighs suddenly, setting his beer bottle down. “Yeah, okay,” he says, which makes Michael pause. Max doesn’t often admit defeat like that, though he will put up with a change of topic. This argument’s one they’ve been having for a while, hashing it out in one direction when Michael decided he was ready to shove his shit into his truck and throw himself into a degree, and now back around the other way. “This isn’t actually why I came over here, you know,” Max says. 

“You’ve got a life outside badgering me to be a valuable member of society? Shocking.” 

“Be shocked, then. I’m waiting for, uh - “ Max turns at the sound of the opening garage door in the house. Isobel, who comes into the kitchen with distinction. Her heels click on the tile. She sets her purse down and flips her ponytail over her shoulder, leans against her kitchen island. 

“What’s up?” Michael says, suddenly suspicious. Isobel’s shoulders are rigid and she looks uncomfortable. Not fake - one common Isobel expression - or irritated or making nice or even just plain bitchy. Uncomfortable. 

“Need to tell you something, bud,” Max says, frowning. 

“Are you practicing staging an intervention or something?” Michael asks with dawning horror. “Are you staging an actual intervention?” The alternative is something worse, something dangerous. An accident, a slip-up - something Max is always waiting for. A discovered lie - that’s Isobel’s fear. Or has she remembered something buried, something Michael and Max both decided to put behind them years ago for her best interest, letting the truth get swept into small town gossip and grief? That’s what Michael fears most, way beyond the threat of discovery. That Isobel might learn the truth about what she doesn’t remember. That someone might have gotten hurt again. 

“I was at the station this morning and I got some news that I think you should hear,” Max says, and Michael’s stomach lurches. It must show on his face because Max shakes his head. “Not about - no, it’s not news about us,” he says quickly. “It’s about someone we went to high school with.”

And now Michael’s just confused. The Venn diagram of _ people we went to high school with _ and _ people he talks to _is Max and Isobel and sometimes Maria DeLuca when he's ordering drinks from her, unless he's counting the people who loiter around DeLuca's bar. 

“It’s about Alex Manes,” Max says. 

He says the name carefully, easily. Like it’s not sacrosanct or beloved, like there isn’t some part of Michael that isn’t always waiting to hear it somewhere, that dizzying drop of memory. Michael never told. Never had the stomach to. Max is staring at him, his clear eyes concerned, and Michael is suddenly so furious he could throw a car. 

He can’t even bring himself to deny it. What would be the point? 

“How did you know about that?” He rasps, and his voice is like a Frankensteinian shadow of human speech. Ugly. 

“You were friends or something. Weren’t you?” 

Or something. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Michael,” Max repeats like he’s trying to bring Michael back to himself. It reminds him of how Max had acted when they were kids after their reunion; so conscious of Michael’s anger and it’s impact, so determined to figure out how to help him hide it. “He’s close to Sheriff Valenti, I guess, and she told me - she got a call about some bad news. He was in some kind of accident.” 

Max keeps talking and Michael absorbs the facts without hearing them because the rage sinks through him like a knife or a hammer. Hot and biting. Call it rage or helplessness; they’ve always been two sides of the same coin. He listens until he can’t take it anymore and then he stands abruptly, jostling Isobel’s expensive coffee table. 

“Michael,” Max says - cautious, careful. 

“Why are you even fucking telling me this? Why - “ he wants Max to say it suddenly, in the ugliest way he can. If Max says it, then it’s a confirmation that it was real. 

But Max just looks up at him. 

So Michael storms out of the house. 

His airstream is beached in Isobel’s backyard, largely unused in the months he’s been kicking around Roswell. The door flies open on its own and he slams it shut again, then kicks it. Throws a dusty beer bottle across the length of the trailer so it shatters. Michael paces, unable to hold still. If he does, four metal walls will fly apart. 

He tries to consider facts. An accident, and a hospital, and that Michelle Valenti still talks to Alex Manes after almost six years and that Max overheard his name and terrible news and thought Michael should know, and that it’s the kind of crisis bad enough that Max thought Michael should know - 

The door opens behind him and Michael jumps. The whole trailer hitches sideways just a little. Isobel, unfazed, shuts the door again as she comes in and leans her hip against the tiny kitchen counter. She looks long and elegant and tired, which is par for the course for the last six months. 

“Hey,” she says, arching one well-shaped eyebrow. “What was that, then?” 

And the energy to be angry leaves him all at once in a rush. Michael sits on the bed, hard. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Okay,” Isobel nods. 

“Did Max follow you?”

“No.”

“He just - “ Michael clenches his fists. When he does that, his left hand aches. “He doesn’t have any fucking idea what he’s talking about.” 

“For once,” Isobel says, still neutral and cool, “I actually think he was trying to do the right thing and not being terrible at it. You two just - “ 

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Michael repeats, like that means something. Isobel steps across the trailer and she sits down next to him, her movements decisive. She’s barefoot. Her toenails are painted dark purple. 

“Probably not,” she says, and puts her hand on his knee, and doesn’t ask the question. 

She doesn’t ask the question, so Michael tells her. 

It’s been years, at this point, and it’s not like Michael’s lived his life stewing in it. He’s sped through the accomplishment boxes expected of people, distracting himself with a lot of hard work and bad habits. He still thinks about Alex - of course he does - but for the last year or two it’s been in the removed and distant way he thinks about other things he’s left behind that still had an impact. He’s gotten comfortable pinpointing the impact that Alex had, without knowing it. The first person he loved - and yes, he’s sure of that and he can think it so clearly in retrospect and history. Alex was the first person he loved. A little part of him will always ache with that.

They’d been so young. 

Michael Googles him periodically, when he feels nostalgic. Watches videos of his Tiny Desk concert. Buys his albums. Alex writes a lot of music, and he never announces tour dates in New Mexico. He can’t even begin to picture what Alex is like now, where he is or how he’s changed except - and Michael’s brain spits up these facts hard and sure - he’s in a hospital somewhere, and he’s changed in a concrete and physical way that can’t be walked back. 

“Max is right,” Michael says out loud, and he feels Isobel shift a little like she’s paying attention. “We were friends. Alex Manes and me. Friends or - something. We were - “

He looks at his sister. Her mouth is turned down, the corner of her eyes tired and pretty. He can’t say it because there aren’t words so he reaches out into that space that connects them, alien and vast and safe, and tries to remember how it had felt to be looked at and looked after. 

Alex had made him feel safe. So very few other people ever had the decency to even try. And then neither of them had been safe at all. 

Isobel blinks, her eyes shiny. She doesn’t say she’s surprised, or not surprised. She doesn’t say she’s sorry. She just holds onto his knee so hard her nails dig through his jeans, and she doesn’t let go and right at that moment - that’s good enough.

**2018:**

Michael wakes up alone. 

It’s what he’s used to most of the time, no surprise there, but he’s surprised anyway even in the haze of morning. He shouldn’t already be expecting that, Alex sleep-tousled and soft and looking at him. But he is expecting that. And his hand, when he reaches across to the other side of the unmade bed, finds empty space.

Michael sits up. The bed is empty, and so is his bedroom. Warm yellow light filters in through the half-open slatted blinds over the headboard making it very clear that Alex isn’t there. 

Something twists deep in his stomach, a rending pang of told-you-so, of bitter disappointment. It’s what he gets, what he always gets, when he goes reaching for optimism. Thinking he deserves anything is a lesson in how he doesn’t. Again. And again. 

There’s a sound in the other room of his apartment. 

Michael jumps almost out of his skin, which is all he’s got considering he’s not wearing anything else. The instinct is to pick up the lamp on his bedside - look Ma, no hands, neat party trick - and fling it with all the force he can towards the sound. He’d make a pretty good MLB pitcher if chucking things with his mind wouldn’t automatically disqualify him. 

“Morning,” Alex’s voice says from the kitchen. After a moment, he steps around the doorframe into Michael’s line of sight, wearing black briefs and an unbuttoned chambray shirt and his prosthetic leg. He blinks, probably at Michael’s startled expression. “I woke you up.” 

Michael exhales, that dread leaving his body in a rush that almost hurts. He leans back against the headboard. “Guess so.” 

“Early riser,” Alex says. He steps the rest of the way into the room and Michael sees he’s carrying two mugs. On the creaky wooden floor, his artificial foot makes a metallic thump when he steps. “I never seem to sleep well when I’m staying somewhere unfamiliar. Sorry. Old habits, you know.” He frowns, and his tongue meets his lower lip. Something there goes deeper than what he just said. 

Alex hadn’t slept easy, next to him. Not somewhere unfamiliar. Michael wants to ask after that. More than that, Michael wants to find a way to make the place where he is a place where Alex is going to sleep easy. 

“You and I are different,” he says instead. “I can fall asleep anywhere. Drop of a hat. Under bar tables. Lots of libraries. Campsites - mostly without paying for them.” 

“You’ve got stories.” Alex smiles and crosses to the bed, sits down. “I found your coffee maker.” 

“I can see that,” Michael says, and accepts a mug when Alex passes it over. “Like you don’t?” 

“Here and there.” Alex sits, sips his coffee. “That’s hot.” 

“Show you mine if you show me yours?” The discomfort is fading and Michael just wants to take him in, the relaxed set of his shoulders in the morning light and how the hair at the back of his head sticks straight up from sleep. 

“You used that line already.” 

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” Michael says, and leans forward to get closer. Not close enough to touch, quite, but getting there. 

In the morning light Alex is solid and unkempt in a way that’s very un-cool. He has bedhead. He has chipped green polish on his thumbnails. He’s unshaven along his jaw, and there’s ink all down his left arm, above both knees and under each collarbone that Michael hadn’t really paid attention to last night. In the last ten years he took the nose ring out, but started getting tattoos instead. 

“So,” Alex says, and he touches his bottom lip with his tongue, “I can catch a flight - “ and Michael’s stomach turns something sour just like that, defying logic that tells him that of course there’s a deadline on this, two lives that will go their own ways because Alex isn’t going to hole up in his shitty apartment for the rest of his life but he’d hope it could last a little longer, “ - tomorrow morning.” 

Michael blinks, wrong-footed inside his own head. “Tomorrow.” 

“I mean, I wanted to see what you thought before I bought these tickets or anything,” Alex waggles his cell phone, “you do have, you know, a life that my clusterfuck is probably blowing up.” 

“No plans,” Michael says, stupid and giddy. He’d cancel them, if he did. 

“And I’ve got to check in on my dog - “

“Sure, your dog.” 

“ - so I’m going to ring Kyle and make sure he can still check in on her today.” 

“Oh, Kyle.” Michael feels gratified enough to roll his eyes, and then further encouraged when Alex smiles. “You wanna give me the backstory about how he became your dog sitter? ‘Cause I’ve got a pretty good memory. For our senior prom. And I don’t just mean how you looked in that suit.” 

“What about how I looked in that suit?” Alex says, smile growing. “Please don’t say five-dollar Brendon Urie wannabe, my heart can’t take it.”

“I thought it was really brave,” Michael says, genuinely, “and kinda silly. And you’re deflecting about your friend Dr. Valenti.” 

Alex purses his lips, an expression Michael can’t read. He looks smug, or maybe just constipated. “It’s a bit of a story. One I’m not going to tell you while I’m sitting in your bed without any pants on.” 

“What does that mean?” 

Alex puts his phone to his ear. “Sorry,” he whispers, “phone call - hey, man - hey, question - “ 

Michael leans his back against the headboard and drinks his coffee, tries to breathe as he watches Alex talk on the phone. An extended deadline. Michael’s very good at working under pressure but he’s not sure what he’s working for, exactly. What he’s allowed to believe might be possible. 

_ Then don’t, _ Alex had said last night, framed against the pillows with anger and tension fading from his eyes, _ take your eyes off of me. _

If he’d been given the choice, Michael never would have. His own anger at Alex had flared hard and mean last night, but it’s hard to find in the morning. It’s biding its time, the way his anger always does. But he thinks he can send it in the right direction, seeing Alex’s face. 

He’s always struggled with that, throwing his anger at the least common denominator. It’s easier than just being furious with the whole wide world. 

“Sure, dude,” Alex says into the phone, dragging Michael back into the present because the word is so incongruous coming out of his mouth. The rumble of a male voice comes through the phone and Alex laughs. “You’re fishing for details, Valenti, and you’re going to have to work harder than that.” 

Michael raises his eyebrows. Alex rolls his eyes. Then he laughs into the phone. 

“Okay,” he says. “Alright. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, bro - “ Michael leans forward to peer at him, and Alex laughs into the phone again, “ - Broseidon, king of the Broceans - “

“Who are you?” Michael asks in bewilderment, as Alex tosses the phone down. 

“Whatever,” he says, smiling sunnily, “one of those weird inside jokes that just runs out of control until nobody but you thinks it’s funny. Like, Brorontosaurus Rex? No? Well I, for one, find real humor in being an outside observer into frat bro culture.” 

“If we have until tomorrow,” Michael says, trying to regain some control over this ridiculous conversation, as well as his own bravado, “I hope you know I’m not gonna give you a walking tour of the ABQ.” 

Alex’s mouth quirks. “Okay,” he says, slowly. 

“Or, like, even of the neighborhood.” 

“I’m sure it’s a nice neighborhood but that’s not really, you know - “ Alex shrugs, “unless you’re holding me hostage for B-Sides.”

“Rude.” 

“You gave me a blowjob at two in the morning,” Alex says, his eyes creasing, “I think I can give you a private show.” 

It lands as a joke, but it still makes Michael shiver. 

“That’s my point,” he says, with a little bit of a leer. “I’m hoping you don’t want to get out of bed for the rest of the day.”

“I want breakfast tacos.”

“Fine.”

“And since I’m pretty sure you don’t have an accessible shower, I want to take a bath.” 

“Rock and roll ruined you,” Michael says, and Alex leans against his side, laughing. He doesn’t move off of Michael’s side as he props his right leg up on the bed, fiddling around near the knee. 

“I’m taking this off then,” Alex says, and he turns his face away like he doesn’t want to see Michael’s reaction even though last night Michael had removed the prosthetic as he was also trying to get his hand down Alex’s boxers. Alex sets it aside on the floor next to the bed and looks up at Michael when he’s done. Michael makes sure he doesn’t flinch or look away. He considers the clean white line of the scar below Alex’s knee, medical precision broken by - 

It almost makes him want to laugh when he realizes, but he doesn’t. Instead, Michael reaches his hand out to tap on Alex’s kneecap and then fit his palm over it, run fingers along the black ink on the inside of his knee that’s been abruptly cut off. 

A jagged and violent reminder of how this happened; half a tattoo, not unfinished but torn away. Michael can’t tell what it used to be. 

“Rotten luck,” Alex says, his voice pale. “I just got that, when it happened.” 

“Sucks,” Michael says, without anything else to say. 

“I couldn’t quite figure out how to, you know,” Alex is looking at Michael’s thumb on his knee, watching as Michael circles his kneecap with his thumbnail, “call up the tattoo parlor and ask for a refund on account of the fact that their hard work had been knocked clean off by a windshield, and turned into medical waste.” 

“Someone might take you up on that,” Michael says, sliding his hand around the back of Alex’s leg. “For the novelty factor. Medical waste?” 

Alex shrugs, still watching Michael’s hand with his dark eyes. “I was so out of it for days after the accident that I didn’t have the mind to ask what they’d done with my, you know, foot. Could have had it donated to a teaching hospital if I’d been coherent but honestly I kind of wish I’d gotten to keep it.” 

Michael’s hand freezes on the back of Alex’s thigh, mostly as his brain catches up with that particular statement. “Like, taxidermy?"

Alex looks up at him, almost mischievous. “Could’ve pickled it, or something, and stuck it in a jar. For my coffee table. Great conversation starter.” 

Michael stares at him, the amused curve of his mouth. “You are so strange,” he says. “You positive those rumors about you and demon worship weren’t true?” 

“Apparently I had a very busy social calendar in high school,” Alex nods, “sucking cocks and killing chickens. All news to me. No idea how I ever went to class.” 

That makes Michael want to kiss him - so he does, catching the side of Alex’s face with his other hand. The busted-up one. Alex holds his wrist and then - Michael almost sees it coming - touches the side of his hand stiff with scar tissue. Not intentional, but also not an accident. 

Alex pulls back, holding Michael’s hand between his hands. 

“Does it hurt?” 

The warm bubble of their morning, easy conversation and proximity and the teasing out of details, bursts. Michael feels it go. Too good to last. That’s how things go for Michael - the good never stays, and the pain creeps in. 

“Yeah,” Michael says roughly. Alex flinches. “Not all the time, but - yeah.” Alex tenses; Michael can feel it happen and he has no idea what exactly to do to help that. “We don’t have to - “

“What?” Alex snaps. “Talk about it? Don’t you think we should?”

Michael isn’t sure what there is to say. It sucked. He’d do it again. Alex’s face is all but branded into is memory as clear as the scars on his hand, anguish and fear. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Alex tries to say that he’s sorry.

“Maybe we got time to do that too,” Michael says. “Don’t have to hit all the low points today. Save a few for the next forty-eight hours, maybe.” 

Still holding his hand, Alex looks at him. Almost grateful. His fingers bump over Michael’s crooked knuckles and even that’s a little uncomfortable but he doesn’t pull his hand away. 

“Okay,” Alex says. “I’ve thought a lot about what I want to say about it, over the years. Apologize or - just say. It can wait.” 

Michael almost wants to ask, even though he’s swerved hard from the topic. Curiosity prickles, and the mood in the room’s been changed for good. He wants the details, Alex’s thoughts, where he felt them and when. Last night, sitting in the bar together, the coalescing specifics of Alex’s life had felt so strange remote, almost impossible to picture because they were so different from the context Michael remembered him in. Now, in the morning, he wants enough information to make them make sense. 

Michael wants to know what his house looks like, how it’s decorated and how it feels. Who his friends are. What time he wakes up in the morning, and what he’s good at cooking and what he tends to order out. What he listens to when he’s driving. How many books he owns. Why he keeps watching the doorway like a subconscious habit. What other subconscious habits he’s got. What’s the same from when Michael really knew him - and what’s different. 

With no way to say any of that out loud, Michael just touches his face with one hand. Alex closes his eyes for a moment. A muscle in his jaw tenses, and then releases - he’s breathed out on a long, slow exhale. Michael’s noticed him do that a few times, intentional.

When he opens his eyes, Michael’s a little nervous to see something almost like concern in them.

“I feel stupid even telling you this,” Alex says, and his body turns in on itself - shoulders and chin down and his mouth a line, “because it’s been - it’s been twenty-four hours, right? Ten years and twenty-four hours but I guess I - “ he shakes his head, “I think this is important.” 

“This,” Michael says, slowly. “You and me.” 

“I have a really hard time,” Alex is standing stock still, like if he moves he’ll spook himself out of speech, “getting into things without looking for an out.”

Michael can’t tell if that means he’s gone into this conversation that way. Looking for an out - like checking an exit. He digs his nails into his palms just a little, to stop from blurting that unkind thought out loud - rip it off, if that’s what’s coming. Just do the damage. He doesn’t say anything, and that’s harder. Just lets Alex keep talking. 

“That’s not about this,” Alex continues, “or about you or about anything you should feel bad about. It’s just how I am. How I had to be. I turned myself into a runner, always looking for an exit. For ages it was really hard for me to even live in one apartment for longer than six months at a time. Some kind walking starving musician cliche.” He shakes his head a little, and his laugh is directed inward. “Always with two hundred dollars cash and a change of clothes in a backpack under my bed, you know? Just in case. I only got myself a permanent address in Austin because after the accident, because that changed things. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.” 

Michael doesn’t really want to ask, but he also has to know.

“Are you,” he says, “looking for an out for this?” 

Alex’s face shutters, then breaks. He swallows hard. “I don’t want to be,” he says, “I guess that’s why I’m telling you this at all. I’m afraid that I don’t know how else to start anything. I don’t want to hurt you but I also want you to know that I might.” 

Michael looks down at his own knees, one old barbed-wire scar from doing something silly with Max. He tries to stay calm, dissect the words without absorbing the hurt that hasn’t even happened yet. If Alex’s gut reaction is to climb out unlocked windows in the night, his is to swing fast and hard before the real damage can take. 

But this is something else, and his own bravado will only get him so far until he’s grasping at something empty. It’s been a long time since Michael cared about reaching for something real that anybody else could see, dreams of buried spaceships and half-formed words in a language he almost understands but doesn’t, blurring in half-consciousness spaces between waking and sleeping, between blinking, between breathing. 

“I think you’re asking me something,” he says slowly, carefully, “and I don’t want you to put it in a letter this time.” 

“I’m asking you,” Alex says, his dark eyes glassy and serious, “to come after me if I run. I know I don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt but I want to ask you that anyway.”

It matters, the very ridiculous presence of Alex here in this room, in his bed, is worth taking a few hits. He remembers unfolding Alex’s letter one-handed, pain-dizzy and tired, and reading it until the words sat right in his ribs. He remembers Alex kissing him across the stick-shift of his truck. He remembers being handed a guitar.

“I’m pretty sure you’re worth going after,” Michael says, his voice sticking. “Learned that, in the last ten years.” 

They stare at each other, across the space between them on the bed and a decade and years lived. They could have become two whole other people, unrecognizable to each other. They haven’t. 

“Okay,” Alex says finally, and then he screws his face up to break the eye contact. 

“Okay,” Michael echoes, and he can’t help but smile into it, just a little. 

“I’m gonna, uh - “ Alex runs his hand over his face, points towards the bedroom door, “go wash my face, I guess. Maybe I will take a bath.” 

He rises a little unsteadily, one leg and one hand leaning hard on the headboard, so he can reach the prosthetic limb. Slides it on halfway, something precarious. Takes an unsteady step. 

Michael wants to offer something concrete, ask for something real. He considers briefly, wildly, a litany of secrets. He could tell Alex that he’s found a starring role as folk music’s own Lois Lane. He could tell him he’s probably in love with him. 

Instead, he stands up. Takes a step, then a second one, after Alex’s somewhat uneasy progress towards the door. 

“What are you doing?” Alex looks at him over his shoulder, eyes bright. And Michael knows - he’s so sure - that he’s gotten this right this time. 

“What?” He says, and shrugs one shoulder. Feigns casual even though he’s so nervous, so elated. “I’m following you.”

**Author's Note:**

> .... and then they bone in the bathtub. 
> 
> someday in this story these two characters will actually leave the bedroom but NOT TODAY. also arroyo deathmatch is a real band, i borrowed the name of one of their earlier albums for alex's album title so forgive me. 
> 
> i'm leescoresbies.tumblr.com thank you love you please keep me fed in comments & affection 
> 
> that's not music you hear...... THAT'S THE DEVILLLLLLLLLLLL  
that's not the sun in the sky. that's a human heart  
if you're planning your escape you know i'm all for you  
as i watch the sun come up over tallahassee, florida


End file.
